Happy Wednesday, friends!
It was so nice to have our kids home on Monday for President’s Day. I’ve been flying solo as Ryan has been out of town, but we’ve kept ourselves busy with homework, playing outside since we’re having warmer weather, and I’ve thrown in a couple of evening sessions of Dude Perfect. Can’t believe we’re closing in on the month of February already. What?!
I thought I’d share with you all a little mudroom update!
We decided to turn the original kitchen into a mudroom, which was a MUST for living on the farm. Our first summer in this house, I was astonished by the amount of dirt that was getting tracked in by four kids! It left me baffled and I started asking my friend’s parents that raised kids on a farm, how they managed the dirt issue! (I also asked other farm-related questions such as, “how do you keep kids alive while riding around on four-wheelers and dirt bikes?”). I have had my sights on a mudroom to be the “clean-yourself-off-before-you-track-it-in-my-house” zone.
When we first moved into our house, this room originally was a kitchen addition to the original late 1800s farmhouse. The kitchen was tiny, had a weird step-up that awkwardly broke up the room, was pretty dark, and had brick linoleum. We wavered back and forth whether we should relocate the kitchen or just revamp the space and make-do.
Here’s the before pic of what is now the wall the lockers are on (pictured above)…
My brother-in-law and father-in-law did all the work. Beyond grateful for them and the joyful spirit they bring onto the job and in our home! That’s aside from the amazing fact that we have contractors we can trust, that will get the job done, and done right. I’ve heard horror stories of people’s experiences that are otherwise.
We chose to relocate the kitchen, which led to the demo of multiple rooms as we kept discovering unusable space behind the walls, such as…hidden fireplaces, ducts, etc. Plus, the windows in the farmhouse are unusually tall and low, limiting which walls could be used for counter space. Inevitably, we relocated the kitchen to a whole different portion of the house that was added on (circa 1950s). That was a huge overhaul, as you can imagine, but we are so happy to have a larger kitchen/dining space to fit our lifestyle.
Here are some before and after pics…
Now…
This wall below, previously had the stove and some more cabinets…
The wall is now…
The old kitchen had an awkward step in the middle, breaking up the space unnecessarily. To reconcile this, we cut out that lower portion of the room and turned it into a covered porch. There are now two entrances off of the porch. One enters into the main hallway of our house and has a french door, the other is adjacent and is the entrance into the mudroom. We also had to get rid of the brick steps and we replaced it with a wood porch, that leads to a larger deck attaching to our dining room.
Before…
Now…
I don’t miss those days of this…
Much thought went into how to make our mudroom first and foremost, practical, but also tie in with the rest of the house.
We went with the same floor tile as our laundry room upstairs, because we loved it!
Here’s it is our laundry room…
We decided to transition the same color scheme we used for our kitchen range hood into the mudroom. We had a custom-built hood, because it came out even more beautiful than what we found online, for a fraction of the cost!
Sadly, our carpenter (and family) moved their business to California. Check out their website, they do deliver anywhere in the US!
But for our built ins, we hired his recommended friend to build our mudroom lockers. Which, I will mention, he is a lawyer-turned-carpenter. Mad respect! Feel free to comment below if you want his contact.
This was such a fun design process, I always am so grateful for expertise and guidance by professionals. To show my gratitude, I would offer espresso upon arrival and I enjoyed our pre-work chats! We also had him do built-ins for two other rooms, and we couldn’t be happier! His wife is about to do wallpaper installation for us this month, as well. Talk about a professionally creative duo!
Before we moved to a farm, boots were a cute accessory to an outfit. Living here, boots are a necessity. It only took me one time to wear Ugg boots to go feed the chickens, to learn that those are NOT the shoes I want to be wearing when tracking through mud and chicken poop. Here’s our easy access boot rack…
As you can see, we get a ton of natural light in our mudroom!
We had a locker built for each of us. The main portion of the locker is for everyday jackets, hats, and sports bags…
The wire baskets below are for everyday shoes…
The drawers below store less used shoes, spare socks, winter gloves/hats, sunglasses, and the like…
Cabinet above the lockers store out-of-season sports bags. My cabinet has a yoga mat, for quick access when I head to a gym class.
This utility cabinet holds brooms, mops and bb guns, because why not?
We installed a spare fridge in the mudroom, where we put overflow groceries and backup lunch items. This is super helpful for when we host larger gatherings, as well as allowing our main kitchen fridge to remain organized.
Since we don’t have a traditional garage, we’ve had to get creative with outdoor item storage. These baskets are for balls, pumps, cones, basically outdoor sports equipment. Otherwise, my family would be fine to have all these scattered around the property, left to be ruined by the weather or lawnmower. The larger wicker basket is our infamous lost and found for items left behind by family or friends.
This wall is tbd. We had it plumbed in so that we could have a sink if we wanted, but I’m thinking we might utilize the space better for wall hooks to allow guests to hang their coats. Thoughts? Suggestions? I’m open!
We intend to install a stacking washer/dryer. My thoughts for this was that kids could throw their wet, muddy clothes, suits or towels directly into the washer, while also serving as a spare laundry machine!
This shower idea was my genius to eliminate wet, muddy kids from running in and going up our white carpet stairs to wash off. We installed a foot spicket, which is probably the most used. It also serves as a spare shower when we host large gatherings/reunions. We still need to install a shower curtain and towel hook, but haven’t had an immediate need to do so yet!
Now this was unplanned, but incredibly useful this winter! This is Alexia’s portable saddle rack that she uses for 4H fair, but I converted it to a winter gear drying rack. 😂 It’s perfect! And she only needs her saddle rack in the summer, so it’s a win!
Ryan is very particular about lighting in every room, so it was important to him to keep the original windows to get lots of natural light. And since we got rid of the original window above what used to be the old kitchen sink, we installed a narrow window above the lockers to bring in additional light. Personally, I would have rather used the large window space for additional wall hooks (because the easier it is to hang coats up, the more likely my kids are to hang them up), or for a boot/shoe rack that goes up to the ceiling. But one could argue that if the big window wasn’t there, it wouldn’t feel as inviting.
Now the location of the mudroom isn’t exactly convenient for a mudroom. It is in fact the farthest away from where we park. However, since I explained earlier how real the dirt/mud issue is here, we have trained our kids and explain to first-time guests, to come in through the mudroom. It just makes it less stressful to host large groups of kids, if we know their dirty boots will be contained and caught in the mudroom and not my light colored rugs!
If you’re looking for the sources we used for this space, here they are:
Built in lockers paint: Sherwin Williams “Urbane Bronze” (SW 7048)
Locker hardware: knobs | pulls | hooks
Wall paint – Benjamin Moore “Revere Pewter” (HC-172)
That’s our mudroom update! I’m off to go pickup my kiddos from school! xoxo
